This Afghan War Plan By The Guy Who Founded Blackwater Should Scare The Hell Out Of You

In case you thought James Mattis’ job running the Department of Defense wasn’t hard enough, he reportedly had to sit through a presentation — on a Saturday — by two top Beltway bandits, imposed on him by President Donald Trump’s son-in-law and his top propaganda consigliere, on how the Afghanistan war should be run by defense contractors.

Erik D. Prince, a founder of the private security firm Blackwater Worldwide, and Stephen A. Feinberg, a billionaire financier who owns the giant military contractor DynCorp International, have developed proposals to rely on contractors instead of American troops in Afghanistan at the behest of Stephen K. Bannon, Mr. Trump’s chief strategist, and Jared Kushner, his senior adviser and son-in-law, according to people briefed on the conversations.

On Saturday morning, Mr. Bannon sought out Defense Secretary Jim Mattis at the Pentagon to try to get a hearing for their ideas, an American official said. Mr. Mattis listened politely but declined to include the outside strategies in a review of Afghanistan policy that he is leading along with the national security adviser, Lt. Gen. H. R. McMaster.

Mattis and McMaster have promised to deliver their revised Afghanistan strategy to President Trump this month, and while they’re smart enough to know that not all military contracting is evil, they’re not stupid enough to put stock in Prince, a truly unscrupulous money-eating slug jammed into the cold husk of a crew-cut, flag-pin-flaunting patriot.

Prince — who is Education Secretary Betsy DeVos’ brother — reportedly coordinated that latter effort with Bannon and Kushner, the same Trump confidants who got Prince his July 8 audience with Mattis. Prince was a popular guest on Bannon’s radio show during the 2016 campaign, specializing in spittle-flecked conspiracy theories about Hillary Clinton’s emails, rhetorical broadsides that appear more ironic and hilarious with every passing day.

So what’s Prince’s and Feinberg’s idea for winning Afghanistan? The New York Times’ sources say their spiel mirrored a May Wall Street Journal op-ed by Prince, in which he said “an expensive disaster” could be averted by turning control of the Afghan war over to “one person: an American viceroy who’d lead all coalition efforts.” That man — gosh, who could fill such a crucial role? — would report directly to the president and run the war through “private military units” patterned after the East India Company, because that worked so well in Afghanistan in 1842.

Now, imagine again that you’re Mattis, and you’re spending a Saturday “listening politely” to these yahoos beg for complete control over your theater of operations to practice empire for fun and profit, because the president’s pals say you should. It’s a testament to the defense secretary’s integrity that he shot them down. It’s testament to his self-control that he didn’t go HAM on them. Here’s hoping that a Mad Dog can keep the wild hyenas at bay a little longer.

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Adam Weinstein is a Navy vet and senior editor for Task & Purpose. His work has appeared in Esquire, GQ, Gawker, and the New York Times.
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